Thoughts About Florida Property Taxes
Note: This is the (lightly edited) text of an email about the legislature’s current property tax relief efforts that I sent to my representatives this morning.
First, compared to other places I’ve lived, property taxes are not *that* high here. Not low, but not terrible, either, and we shouldn’t forget that Florida has no state income tax. Even now, my total tax burden here is far less than it was in Maryland.
Second, yes to property tax rollbacks: The biggest property tax problem seems to be excess property valuations caused by what I fondly call Real Estate Madness, which got into full swing in 2003. So roll property valuations back to 2003 levels. Real Estate Madness seems to be ending, anyway, and the marketplace is forcing real estate values down without help from the Legislature. Your help is needed only to make sure local property tax assessors stay honest and *record* those drops in value instead of ignoring or glossing over them.
Third, “highest and best use” is a stupid way to judge a property’s value. Just because a greedy developer puts up a stack of highrise condoms in the neighborhood shouldn’t cause a hair salon’s building to get taxed as if it was just as high and ugly. Assessed valuations should be based on a home or commercial building’s current use, not on the price some overmonied fool thinks he can get for the property by putting an overpriced building on it and selling chunks of that building to other overmonied fools as a tax dodge or “investment.”
Fourth, “Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.” And if you are doing well financially, you should be willing to pay a higher percentage of your income and net worth in taxes than someone who’s just scraping by. I’m quoting and paraphrasing Barry Goldwater here. Remember him? Father of modern conservatism and all that? I once saw him light into a guy at a campaign dinner in Tucson (circa 1969) who whined that his income tax rate — on his successful investments — was too high. Sen. Goldwater reminded him that his success was due in large part to the “climate of freedom” our country had provided him, so he should be *proud* to support his country in return. Goldwater also said — and this is a direct quote — “It’s a hell of a lot easier to pay $30,000 in taxes on a $100,000 a year income than it is to pay $500 on $10,000.”
But then, Goldwater also believed in military service, and service to the country in general, not in the self-serving cupidity that has since become the hallmark of the American Rich and of the Republican Party — with Democrats sadly not far behind on self-servingness and and general hypocrisy.
June 7th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Goldwater was also against the Civil Rights Act, while most Republicans were for it. Just because Goldwater was for or against something, doesn’t mean he was right. In this case, he was wrong, and even more to the point, you’re wrong for impugning the motives of people just because they disagree with you. It’s unbecoming in an otherwise intelligent person.
June 7th, 2007 at 6:22 am
Actually, Goldwater said at the time that he was against the civil rights act because we already had plenty of anti-discrimination laws on the books that weren’t being enforced. His position was that the country should have been enforcing those laws instead of making new ones. Maybe he was right about this, and maybe he wasn’t. Legislators at all levels often seem to look at a problem and see only legislative solutions to it rather than seek executive (operational) solutions. It’s entirely possible that we would have an entirely different — and possibly nicer — racial landscape in the U.S. today if we had done things Goldwater’s way. We’ll never know.
Don’t forget: Eisenhower found plenty of legal justification to use federal forces on behalf of school integration and to fight other racial injustices long before the civil rights acts was passed.
In general, Goldwater was not — in my opinion, based on my contemporary recollections of what he said and did as a U.S. Senator — nearly as much in favor of a small, non-interventionist government as he was in favor of a *simple* government with comparatively few, easily-understood laws.
In a strange way, “ultra-conservative” Barry Goldwater and my extremely liberal parents and my (even more extremely liberal) activist maternal grandmother shared a belief that seems to have fallen out of favor today.
I call this belief “techno-utopianism.” At its core was the idea that we would eventually solve the world’s problems through technology, and that we’d *all* benefit through having more material goods (and more energy-efficient lifestyles) and better public facilities, not to mention peace and harmony throughout the world and fewer and less-stressful work hours for everyone, through automation of farming and factory production.
Political disagreements among the techno-utopian believers were not about the desired end result, but about how best to achieve it.
If the techno-utopians’ vision had come to pass as I think they expected, whether through free market or government interventionist means, by now I’d only be working 30 hours a week, and on Friday afternoons, after work, my wife and I would hop into our flying car and zoom over to Miami for supper.
Oh, well.
August 15th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Highest and Best Use is a real estate principal that is used by both tax assessors and real estate appraisers. Its based on the legal, physically possible, and most profitable use a property can generate.
If properties are assessed based on actual use, such as a hair salon on the beach, how do we appraise/assess the vacant lot next door? What if the vacant lot was purchased for a million dollars for future development and its the exact same size and zoning as the hair salon. Should we then assess the vacant lot for a million dollars and the hair salon for $100,000? What if you owned a vacant lot on the other side of the the hair salon. How should that be assessed? The same as the developer’s lot?
The fact is, property is assessed based on its value using the tried and true method of Highest and Best Use. If we as society want to give the hair salon or Mom and Pop motel a break, then let’s come up with an exemption, like maybe a “heritage” exemption if we want to preserve those property types. But straying from standard real estate appraisal principles will only create more inequity and potential for abuse.
Tim Wilmath, MAI
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Your comment, “Real Estate Madness” is not solely restricted to the USA, it is definitely alive and kicking in the UK. And more than likely, its been seen in other parts of Europe and around the Med in the past couple of years.
regards Dave